{"schema":"sanctity-signal/0.2","record_type":"signal","id":"europe-datacentre-day-of-action-e079","domain":"society","drop_id":"signal-e079","occurred_at":"2026-11-07","how_to_use":"This is a structured record of one real-world action and its competing interpretations, from Sanctity Signal. To build content from it (a reel script, a blog, a thread): open on the hook, ground the viewer with plain and observed, walk the dated trail, present the interpretations as live tension between named readings, and close on the before/after shift and what_to_watch. Hard rules: items under established are fact; items under unknown are never presented as fact; the evidence status (verified or reported) is stated, not dropped; sources are cited.","actor":"Stop Dirty Data Centres and Friends of the Earth Ireland","action_type":"a coordinated two-day European programme of marches demanding a moratorium on large data centres, including Ireland's first national protest, which marched on the parliament","observed":"We read 2 organiser primaries. Friends of the Earth Ireland's page at friendsoftheearth.ie carries the Dublin action: Saturday November 7, 2026, 12:00 to 14:00, Garden of Remembrance to the Dail. It now reads \"This event is over and booking is closed.\" The demand is a government moratorium on new data centres, framed as an urgent climate, energy security and cost of living step. Its figures: data centres use 23% of Ireland's electricity, the highest per capita in the world, and directly employ 3,300 people, about 0.1% of the workforce. The page calls the march one of 80 events in 16 European countries, and elsewhere says over 100 groups are joining. European coordinators named: Global Action Plan, Green Web Foundation, Leitmotiv, Tu Nube Seca Mi Rio, the Spanish Strategic Litigation Group, Friends of the Earth Ireland, Data 4 Good, APRS Scotland, the Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice. Irish supporters named: An Taisce, BOLD Climate Action, Climate Justice Universities Union, Not Here Not Anywhere, Kildare Data Centre Awareness, Futureproof Clare, Kilmeadan Against Industrialisation. The coalition site stopdirtydatacentres.eu lists November 6 and 7 as European Days of Action across about 13 countries by our tally: the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Italy, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, Croatia, Belgium. Cities include Amsterdam, London, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Madrid, Barcelona, Warsaw, Dublin, Helsinki, Berlin, Leeds, Bristol, Zagreb, Turin. Its demand is an immediate moratorium on large European data centres. One London event is marked cancelled for lack of a venue. Organisers include GLOBAL 2000 and AlgorithmWatch; supporters include Greenpeace UK, Greenpeace Germany, Global Witness, EDRi. Neither site publishes a post-event record. Reported, in neither primary: the Irish Times at 16:10 on November 7 has hundreds marching from Parnell Square to Leinster House; Rosi Leonard of Friends of the Earth Ireland cites an estimate of about 360 euros in extra household electricity costs from 2015 to 2023, and says wholesale prices doubled in 12 months; Paul Murphy of People Before Profit puts about half of Ireland's 124 data centres in one council area; the Social Democrats, Green Party, People Before Profit and Sinn Fein attended. Euronews on November 5 had over 100 rights groups in 15 countries, European data centre investment rising from 12 billion euros in 2020 to 25 to 26 billion this year, and 176 billion forecast from 2026 to 2031 by PwC.","corrections":[],"evidence":{"status":"reported","note":"Reported, not verified. We read 2 organiser primaries: the Friends of the Earth Ireland event page, which carries the date, time, route and demand and now says the event is over, and stopdirtydatacentres.eu, which lists the programme. Neither publishes a post-event record. The march itself, and its size, come from the Irish Times at 16:10 on November 7.","sources":[{"role":"primary","label":"Friends of the Earth Ireland event page for the Dublin moratorium protest, read Nov 7, 2026","url":"https://www.friendsoftheearth.ie/events/join-our-protest-against-data-centre-expansion/"},{"role":"primary","label":"Stop Dirty Data Centres, the coalition's own Nov 6 and 7 programme","url":"https://stopdirtydatacentres.eu/"},{"role":"corrob","label":"Irish Times: first national data centre protest, Nov 7, 2026, 16:10","url":"https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/climate-crisis/2026/11/07/they-are-tearing-communities-apart-first-national-protest-against-data-centres-in-dublin/"},{"role":"corrob","label":"Euronews: Europe-wide call for a data centre freeze, Nov 5, 2026","url":"https://www.euronews.com/2026/11/05/protesters-across-europe-to-call-for-freeze-on-energy-hungry-data-centres"},{"role":"corrob","label":"Hot Press: Dublin protest in a Europe-wide day of action, Nov 4, 2026","url":"https://www.hotpress.com/opinion/major-protest-to-take-place-in-dublin-as-part-of-europe-wide-day-of-action-on-data-centres-23168041"},{"role":"corrob","label":"Tom's Hardware: protesters storm Microsoft's Amsterdam site, Nov 6, 2026","url":"https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/protesters-storm-microsoft-ai-data-center-construction-site-amsterdam-reportedly-first-of-85-targeted-actions-across-europe"}]},"strength":{"cost":"Low","commitment":"Medium","reversibility":"High","persistence":"Year","rationale":"We score this modestly and say why. Cost is low: a march costs volunteer time, and no participant risked money or office. Commitment is medium rather than low because the coordination is documented, with named partners across more than a dozen countries, one written demand, and elected representatives from 4 Irish parties appearing beside it in public. Reversibility is high: a coalition can disperse and a demand can go unmet. Persistence is a year, because nothing here binds any government and no permit changed."},"shift":{"prior":"Data centre opposition was local, scattered and fought site by site.","action":"We read 2 organiser primaries. Friends of the Earth Ireland's page at friendsoftheearth.ie carries the Dublin action: Saturday November 7, 2026, 12:00 to 14:00, Garden of Remembrance to the Dail. It now reads \"This event is over and booking is closed.\" The demand is a government moratorium on new data centres, framed as an urgent climate, energy security and cost of living step. Its figures: data centres use 23% of Ireland's electricity, the highest per capita in the world, and directly employ 3,300 people, about 0.1% of the workforce. The page calls the march one of 80 events in 16 European countries, and elsewhere says over 100 groups are joining. European coordinators named: Global Action Plan, Green Web Foundation, Leitmotiv, Tu Nube Seca Mi Rio, the Spanish Strategic Litigation Group, Friends of the Earth Ireland, Data 4 Good, APRS Scotland, the Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice. Irish supporters named: An Taisce, BOLD Climate Action, Climate Justice Universities Union, Not Here Not Anywhere, Kildare Data Centre Awareness, Futureproof Clare, Kilmeadan Against Industrialisation. The coalition site stopdirtydatacentres.eu lists November 6 and 7 as European Days of Action across about 13 countries by our tally: the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Italy, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, Croatia, Belgium. Cities include Amsterdam, London, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Madrid, Barcelona, Warsaw, Dublin, Helsinki, Berlin, Leeds, Bristol, Zagreb, Turin. Its demand is an immediate moratorium on large European data centres. One London event is marked cancelled for lack of a venue. Organisers include GLOBAL 2000 and AlgorithmWatch; supporters include Greenpeace UK, Greenpeace Germany, Global Witness, EDRi. Neither site publishes a post-event record. Reported, in neither primary: the Irish Times at 16:10 on November 7 has hundreds marching from Parnell Square to Leinster House; Rosi Leonard of Friends of the Earth Ireland cites an estimate of about 360 euros in extra household electricity costs from 2015 to 2023, and says wholesale prices doubled in 12 months; Paul Murphy of People Before Profit puts about half of Ireland's 124 data centres in one council area; the Social Democrats, Green Party, People Before Profit and Sinn Fein attended. Euronews on November 5 had over 100 rights groups in 15 countries, European data centre investment rising from 12 billion euros in 2020 to 25 to 26 billion this year, and 176 billion forecast from 2026 to 2031 by PwC.","update":"It now coordinates across borders and asks national parliaments for moratoriums."},"inference":{"established":["Friends of the Earth Ireland called the Dublin march for November 7, noon.","The organisers' demand is an immediate moratorium on large European data centres.","The Irish Times reported hundreds marched to Leinster House on November 7."],"unknown":["Turnout. Organisers published no figure, and hundreds is a reporter's estimate.","That 80 events happened. That is the organisers' plan, not a record.","Any government response. No minister or parliament has committed to a moratorium."]},"narrative":{"hook":"Campaigners marched in Dublin and across Europe, demanding a halt to new data centres.","plain":"Ireland held its first national protest against data centres on November 7, part of a two-day European campaign. Caveat: organisers' own counts of the countries and events involved do not agree.","story":["Ireland is the test case. Data centres take 23% of its electricity and employ 3,300 people directly, by the organisers' figures. Opposition parties walked with the march, days before a meeting of EU heads of state. A moratorium in the country Europe built its cloud on would reprice every project behind it."],"trail":[{"d":"SEP 16","t":"Virginia signs an order making large data centres harder to build. Edition 026. Days later Europe adopts a published energy and water grade for every data centre above 500 kilowatts. Edition 029."},{"d":"OCT 6","t":"Finland's licensing agency orders Google's project company to stop clearing land for 2 AI data centres. Edition 045. Finland is in this weekend's programme."},{"d":"OCT 27","t":"A UK campaign group counts which organisations ministers met about data centres. Environmental groups: zero. Edition 064. The grievance is procedural as much as environmental."},{"d":"NOV 3","t":"Voters in 10 American states decide 41 data centre ballot measures, and 28 would limit them. Edition 072. The same demand reaches Europe 4 days later, through civil society rather than ballots."},{"d":"NOV 6","t":"Protesters break into Microsoft's Amsterdam data centre construction site on the programme's first day. Reports put detentions between 150 and 200. Noted in Undercurrents on its own date."},{"d":"Reacts","r":true,"t":"The Irish government, asked for a moratorium by 4 opposition parties on the parliament's doorstep; EU heads of state, meeting within days while the Commission pushes to triple capacity; EirGrid and the grid operators holding the connection queues; Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta, whose European sites are named; planning authorities in 13 countries."}],"glossary":[{"term":"Moratorium","def":"A legal pause on approving new projects, for a set period or until rules change. It stops new permits, not existing sites."},{"term":"Per capita electricity share","def":"A country's data centre power use measured against its population. Ireland's is the world's highest on the organisers' figures."},{"term":"Grid connection queue","def":"The waiting list of projects seeking permission to draw power. A long queue means the grid cannot serve what is already approved."},{"term":"AI Continent Action Plan","def":"The European Commission's programme to at least triple EU data centre capacity within 5 to 7 years."}]},"judgment":{"prompt":"Which explanation do you believe?","interpretations":[{"id":"a","label":"A European movement has formed","text":"One campaign, one demand, many countries, on a single coordinated weekend.","abstain":false},{"id":"b","label":"An Irish energy fight","text":"Ireland's grid share is extreme. The march was mostly about electricity bills.","abstain":false},{"id":"c","label":"Timed at the EU summit","text":"Groups chose the weekend before EU leaders meet, to set the agenda.","abstain":false},{"id":"d","label":"Normal infrastructure opposition","text":"Big buildings always draw protests. Roads and airports got the same.","abstain":false},{"id":"e","label":"Too early to call.","text":"The evidence cannot yet separate these.","abstain":true}],"distribution":{"status":"held back until you have made your call","calls":null}},"story_thread":null,"what_to_watch":[{"linked_interpretation":"a","direction":"strengthens","observable_event":"An EU national government or parliament adopts or formally proposes a moratorium on new large data centres, by June 30, 2027.","window_end":"2027-06-30","state":"unresolved"},{"linked_interpretation":"a","direction":"weakens","observable_event":"The coalition holds no further multi-country day of action and publishes no record of these 2 days, by March 31, 2027.","window_end":"2027-03-31","state":"unresolved"},{"linked_interpretation":"c","direction":"strengthens","observable_event":"The demand appears in a European Council or Commission document, or a named head of state's statement, by December 31, 2027.","window_end":"2027-12-31","state":"unresolved"}]}